Two from the Samuel Z. Arkoff Files

When I was a kid, WXIA Channel 11 showed a wild menagerie of sci-fi/horror features every Saturday afternoon. This was back in 1979 and 1980. I remember going to the city pool, listening to ELO songs on the top-40 radio station, and heading back home in time for the creature feature on 11-Alive! The film catalog on this program was stuck mainly in the late-50s through early-70s. So I would tune into Unearthly Wife one Saturday and then The Incredible Two-Headed Transplant the following weekend. What I didn't notice at the time was the American International Pictures logo at the start of the black and white movies. It was AIP that provided such WXIA doozies like The Beast with a Million Eyes and The Amazing Colossal Man. I was particularly fond of the latter, a tale of a man who survives a plutonium blast only to grow 10 feet a day. I also got a kick out of the giant grasshopper thriller Beginning of the End, with Peter Graves stopping the onslaught of marauding mutant insects in Chicago. I remembered seeing stills from The Amazing Colossal Man and Beginning of the End in my brother's Starlog a couple of years earlier. That was an article all about Mr. B.I.G. - Bert I. Gordon, who helmed these pictures and many other giant monster movies. Recently I borrowed the Samuel Z. Arkoff Cult Classics double feature DVD from a work friend and exposed my kids to the enjoyment of B movie monster mania from the AIP vault -- War of the Colossal Beast and Earth vs. the Spider (both from 1958)

Both War and Earth were featured prominently in Famous Monsters of Filmland when I was a kid (late 70s). There was a Castle Films ad for both movies in the Captain Company section. The Colossal Beast ad had a closeup of the disfigured mug of the Beast (probably when he was picking up the bread truck). Spider had a chilling spider with a skull head climbing down its web. Oh, for want of those Super 8 gems in the back of FM! I had to wait until the early 90s to see the Colossal Beast's rampage in Los Anglele, and that was on Mystery Science Theater 3000. I didn't see Spider until a few years ago, even though this was on tape at Blockbuster and Wal Mart back in the early-90s (even on Cinemax during that period). So I had a blast taking in the 50s drive-in (or Saturday matinee) monster rampage with my kids, who gave the films a formidable 4.2 out of 5!

War of the Colossal Beast is probably the better of the two. This one is a sequel to the MIA on DVD 1957 cult classic The Amazing Colossal Man. In Amazing, Glenn Langan played Colonel Glenn Manning - the unfortunate 60' man pulverizing Las Vegas (thanks to Bert I. and Flora Gordon's special effects). The big guy got blasted by a bazooka and fell to his "death" in the Boulder Dam. A year later, food trucks are going missing in Mexico and one of the drivers screams out something about a giant while lying in his hospital bed. Glenn's sister travels down from L.A. to help look for her brother, who is missing an eye and half of his face due to scar tissue from the fall (or not being able to get Langan to reprise the role). Glenn is now an amnesic, snarling, roaring menace, who gets tranquilized and flown to LAX for observation. Whoa - bad move! Fortunately, it's not a bad movie, despite a few lulls and slow start. The Beast makeup is iconic and was applied by Harry Thomas onto bald Dean Parkin.

Earth vs. the Spider (or The Spider, as it was originally released) is AIP's take on Universal's Tarantula. The humungous bird spider roosts inside a condemned cave, only to come out at night looking for meals on wheels. Teenagers get involved in the hunt for the hairy arachnid when a girl's father goes missing on the dark, desolate highway. Once it is "killed" and put on display in the high school near the 30 minute mark, you know this town is going to be in trouble. It's rock and roll that sets this beast off for the rampage. This picture has the nice ambience of a small 50s town, complete with bakeries, mattress plant, homey sheriff's office (with out of shape sheriff and deputy), and a movie theater showing Attack of the Puppet People! There are even multiple posters of The Amazing Colossal Man! Both pictures are from Mr. B.I.G.'s amazing colossal film catalog.

Now if we could only get The Amazing Colossal Man on DVD!

CBS Late Movie Hall of Fame...and Plea for Comments

Hello out there! This is my first post since February, but I'm surprised the Blogger counter registered so many visitors to my site. I don't know if people got transported here by mistake or if visitors actively seeked some ripe old monster movie talk. Unfortunately, I had the comments set so that only registered users could leave feedback. So I don't know what sort of potential conversations I put a kabosh on because of my ignorance. But please please PLEASE, try to leave a comment here if you like what you're reading. Please offer up comments on what you like and what could use a little more work. Even if it's something like "Cool Giant Gorilla Photos" and nothing else. I just want to make sure this thing works and I'm not writing to an empty space in the cybersphere.

Now on to the crazy creature mayhem on the late show. Back in the mid-70s, the country was full of horror movie programs with hosts in capes and grease paint makeup or with no hosts and sponsors like Ginsu, Ronco, and K-Tel. The shows would come on late, usually after the 10:30 news, and you had to beg for permission to stay up if it was a school night. The stations in each market would split up the various monster movie packages, so that you could see Godzilla battling King Kong on one VHF channel while Colin Clive was stitching together cadavers further up the UHF band. The pictures were mostly in magical monochrome on a flickering phosphor tube with each station lending its unique presentation of the film. Alas, there was one resource for chilling and fantastic cinema that was a shared experience. It was the CBS network, bouncing its signal all around the States with gruesome fright flicks and psychedelic sci-fi - nearly all of it in vibrant color!

The CBS Late Movie was a nightly ritual during the summer and a Friday night tradition the rest of the year. After the weather recap on the 10:30 news, the colored stars would come out and multiply -- marching toward the screen in their spiraling multi-hued glory. Those colored stars were part of the 70s graphics that CBS also employed during their prime time movie programs. The calvacade of stars was accompanied by a bombastic horn section. Then the announcer would say "Tonight..." and follow it up with a one-sentence description of the movie followed by a list of the main actors. Sometimes the announcer would be lighthearted and giddy, like when he'd introduce a Jerry Lewis or Elvis Presley movie. Sometimes he would be straighforward and give you the plot synopsis of a western or war film. But I always got a tingling sensation in my spine when he would talk in an ominous tone while the theme music seemed to turn more sinister. Then the music drew to an abrupt close and The CBS Late Movie seemed to crash into the screen and halt. Then my heart skipped a beat as the teaser trailer would start, giving a spooky sample of the frightening picture about to roll. Then I had to keep watching.

Here are some of the horror and science fiction movies that stand out in my memories of staying up until the CBS station signed off with the National Anthem (or I got tired of the PSAs that clogged the airwaves as the movie drew to a close):

It! (1966): I saw this one around 1975 on a Friday night and it sparked my interest in monster movies. I saw the preview the week before and I was entranced with the awesome pointy head statue that would come to life and go on a rampage. I kept talking about the "monster statue" movie up until I finally got to see it. This was a couple of years before I learned about the Golem in Dulan Barber's Monsters Who's Who book at the local library. When I later read an article in Famous Monsters about the golem, it brought back sweet memories when I saw a shot of the It! statue walking along a shoreline in the water. When I first saw this clay monstrosity, it made me uneasy waiting for it to become mobile and go about its spree of destruction. But later I came out from behind the curtain separating the living room from the dining room and took a couch for the rest of the movie. It! came on twice on the CBS Late Movie. The first time had to added thrill of containing previews of Hammer's The Mummy during the commercial break. Sadly, I forgot to stay up late for that one. It! was shot in Great Britain for a company called Goldstar, which didn't attain the staggering heights of Hammer or the modest reputation of Tigon Pictures. Their only other film release was The Frozen Dead.

The Abominable Dr. Phibes (1971): Oh boy! What a wham-bang mixture of the darkest comedy, diabolical vengeance, and old style pursuit of the villain who's always one step ahead of Scotland Yard. My dad would stay up with me to watch the Dr. Phibes flicks, and he never cared much for the horror genre. As a matter of fact, he absolutely detested those kinds of movies (with the other exception being House of Wax...must had really admired Vincent Price). This one - probably Vincent Price's finest - seemed to come on at least once a year, along with its follow-up Dr. Phibes Rises Again (1972). This was before I got into learning about horror cinema, so I thought Price was the guy who played Captain Kangaroo commiting all the heinous murders. I was wondering where Mr. Green Jeans was during all of this. The expressionless automatons in Phibes's swing band seemed fascinating in a weird sort of way, as was Phibes's method of talking through a cord piped into a hole in his neck. The kills with the rats and the locusts made me cringe and the locust murder left me kind of sad after getting to know the nurse a little bit. All in all, this is still one the movies I go back to and it made me look forward to anything that started off with that early-70s American International Pictures logo (something that popped up frequently on the CBS Late Movie).

House of Dark Shadows (1970): This was the first movie that terrified me (outside commercials for movies like The Exorcist). When Barnabas Collins (Jonathan Frid) turned ancient and bared his terrible fangs after some blood therapy didn't go as planned, it felt like my hair stood up and my jaw came crashing to the floor. I actually locked my bedroom windows and door, something that got me a lecture the next day on how my parents wouldn't be able to get to me if the house caught on fire. Obviously, my parents must have seen too many of those Dick Van Dyke fire prevention PSAs on the CBS Late Movie -- the ones where Van Dyke would instruct us to "Stop! Drop! and Roll!" if we catch on fire. This movie made me curious about the TV show from the 60s, which was broadcast late at night on Atlanta's WTCG-17. The sequel - Night of Dark Shadows - came on the CBS Late Movie in the summer of 1977. However this was the beginning of CBS showing an episode of an old cop show before the main feature. So I fell asleep during Kojak and never got to see Night of...which isn't a such bad thing from what I hear.

The Green Slime (1969): This Japanese-American co-production from MGM graced my TV screen late one Friday night. This was yet another movie I got psyched up over after I saw the CBS Late Movie preview of coming attractions. A sci-fi monster extravaganza with alien muck that gets in the space station laundry and soon grows into tentacled monstrosities that burn their victims with their touch. My brother and I couldn't get enough of this way out deep space action-thriller and we talked about it for weeks. I even impulsively bought an issue of Psychotronic magazine in 1996 because of this cover:


Frogs (1972): Ray Milland, Joan Van Ark, and Sam Elliot co-star in this nature-gone-amuck environmental thriller featuring killer lizards, snakes, butterflies (at least as accomplices in the mayhem), and of course the onslaught on frogs bent on revenge. While this isn't the most exciting eco-thriller to me now, back then it fostered my fear of snakes and left me watching out for slithering creatures in the backyard. This is yet another AIP drive-in production that made its network television debut when I should have been in bad.

The Fearless Vampire Killers (1967): Dan Curtis's Dracula was really popular during its run on the CBS prime time movie. I remember my grandmother filling me in on vampire lore while I was watching it. Around the same time, my parents let me stay up and watch Roman Polanski's take on blood drinking creatures of the night. But here the aristrocratic Count was intermingled with the loathesome commoners with the propensity for biting necks. A couple of bumbling vampire hunters - an absent minded elderly professor and his young protege - go lurking about the snowcapped countryside and a lavish castle in search of the undead scourge. There's even a ball filled with ghastly fanged guests up for some dancing. My family had several chuckles at the expense of the clueless duo packing stakes and holy water.

Shock Waves (1977): This one came on a school night in fall of 1978 and I had to do all my homework and try to sleep during the prime time hours to get to watch it. This is undoubtedly the creepiest of the Nazi zombie subgenre that John Carradine kicked off in the 1940s. White faced, bleach-haired zombies with dark goggles terrorize Peter Cushing and the stranded vacationers in an abandoned estate on a desolate island. And it was John Carradine who took the bickering couples out on that ill-fated cruise. The TV Guide played this one up with a picture ad showing Brooke Adams in a terror-stricken pose. But I remember the newspaper ads with the undead soldiers rising from the ocean. That was what drew me to this terrific 70s cult classic.

Some honorable mentions are the man beast flick The Bat People (also from AIP), the Kolchak: the Night Stalker reruns on Friday night, George Pal's The 7 Faces of Dr. Lao (for a little bit of that MGM big budget luster to counteract the grindhouse element), and the "what the heck" antics of giant bunnies in Night of the Lepus (with Dr. McCoy in it!). I'd probably better stop my rambling, even though there are many more great creature features that graced the late show screen on our CBS affiliate. Please let me know your favorite CBS Late Movie memories and monster movie memories in general. Thanks for reading!

Lean Fiend Carradine

I first discovered gaunt ghoul John Carradine in Famous Monsters. Captain Company had an ad for a Super 8 film called Doom of Dracula (an abridged version of House of Frankenstein). There was an image of the caped, moustachioed Carradine lying dormant in a coffin. I learned fast that Carradine was second to Christopher Lee as the actor who played Dracula the most times., even if one of those potrayals Carradine openly dissed at public appearances. See if you can guess which one:

House of Frankenstein (1944)

House of Dracula (1945)

Billy the Kid vs. Dracula (1966)

But then I discovered a whole slew of medical maniacs and evildoers that Mr. Carradine brought to the late night TV screen. WTVC-9 in Chattanooga showed Carradine was a whiz at bringing back the dead - including a ghostly Great Dane - in Face of Marble (1946). While other stations were showing the Universals and AIPs, Dr. Shock on WDEF-12 in Chattanooga dug deep inside the povery row vaults to unearth the tale of unhinged puppeteer Bluebeard, with Carradine playing a real lady killer. Horror Classics on WAAY-31 in Huntsville introduced Paula the Ape Woman, as concocted by Carradine in Captive Wild Woman (1943), and the sinister high priest who unleashes Kharis the mummy on a small Massachessetts town in The Mummy's Ghost (1943). It got to the point that I would at least start watching any late movie with John Carradine in the cast - even The Grapes of Wrath and Stagecoach (and I didn't care much for westerns when I was growing up).

Here are some of my John Carradine movie memories - the flicks that introduced me to the suave menace:

The Black Sleep (1956) - My second issue of Famous Monsters came courtesy of my mom and brother in August 1977. They had stopped at the Zippy Mart for gas or a snack on their way back from Georgia. The cover was made up of stills from the latest blockbuster Star Wars - which would become the main focus of the magazine until The Empire Strikes Back opened in 1980. It was a nice summer afternoon, so I sat outside and reveled in the gruesome black and white stills and hit-or-miss puns from Uncle Forry. Among Forry's targets were the manimals in the new Dr. Moreau film, Lugosi and his winged instrument of vengeance - the dreaded Devil Bat, and horror movies with the word "House" in the title. But the one article that stood out was a filmbook on Reginald LeBorg's mad doctor and mutant, all-star extravaganza The Black Sleep. The headline touted Rathbone, Lugosi, Chaney, and Carradine - all together in one picture! I had gotten Alan G. Frank's Horror Movies book at Woolworth's just a couple of months earlier, so I had some familiarity with those names and knew they were masters of their art. Carradine was shown in an FMoF still with a scraggly beard and tattered clothes...along with the big, bulky bald villain Tor Johnson.

Reading Forry's account of this seemingly remarkable movie intrigued me, so I had to keep looking out for it in the TV Guide. Then, about one year later, The Black Sleep showed up in the listings around 10:30 PM on the WTCG-17 all night Friday night horror movie show. 10:30 wasn't late to me at that time - I had stayed up until 2:00 in the morning to watch Soul of a Monster at the tail end of WTCG's horror program. And instead of a man possessed to kill (as in Soul), this time I would get a castle full of monsters roaming about - wreaking havoc on all those who inhabit the dark abode.

But I had to wait to see Carradine....wait and wait...with some fairly interesting subplots of Dr. Cadman (Rathbone) tending to his pale, comatose wife and a kooky gypsy man who supplies cadavers to the doctor. The movie was still able to hold my attention as I waited for the monsters to be unleashed. But my film watching was foiled by an untimely power outage. So I lay in the dark, saddened by not getting to see Carradine and crew on their rampage.

However, once the lights came on, I jumped out of bed and turned on channel 17 again. There were only 10 minutes left, but I got to watch Carradine, Chaney, the bald Frankenstein-like sailor, and the mighty Tor in action. I walked away satisfied. I did get to see the movie as a whole in 1994 when it came on TNT's 100% Weird movie show. That was back when cable seemed like a necessity for us monster movie lovers. But now with Netflix and the decline of basic cable, that's not the case.

Invisible Invaders (1959) - Zowie!!! I remember seeing the ad for the Sunday morning Science Fiction Theater program on WAAY-31 in Huntsville. The commercial showed an army of palefaced, lumbering ghouls in business suits slowly lurching down a hill. I couldn't wait for the movie to begin. When the film started, I got even more jazzed up when I saw John Carradine in the cast. This had to have been the summer of '77, when I had starting brushing up on my monster movie knowledge and knew about the icons of horror cinema. Of course, I had to sit through some exposition at the beginning, but I did get to see the infamous exploding Carradine scene during the opening. I sort of knew that was Carradine because he was a scientist tampering with things best left alone. Once the film got going, I was propelled into the strange tale of invisible moon creatures inhabiting the corpses of the recently deceased and going about their takeover of the world. I couldn't get enough of this grade-B cheese-o-rama. My parents were considering getting me counseling at this time.

Carradine Looks Amazingly Good after Suffering a Massive Explosion that Killed Him (Invisible Invaders, 1959)

Return from the Past (1967) - this was an anthology of pulp comic book horror stories done in the style of a Creepy or Eerie tale. I caught this one on WTCG-17 (Atlanta) late one summer night in 1980. I had just seen Dr. Terror's House of Horrors on WTCG and enjoyed it immensely. I looked Return from the Past up in my worn out Leonard Maltin movie guide and saw it earned the dubious BOMB rating. Then I noticed all of this movie's alternate titles, one of which was Dr. Terror's Gallery of Horrors. Whoa!!! That seemed too bizarre and I began to wonder what I was getting myself into. My brother was up with me to watch it, so I figured we could have some fun with it. I noticed the cast had both Lon Chaney and Mr. Carradine in it (and someone named Rochelle Hudson, whom I didn't know but Mr. Maltin seemed to think I should know). There wasn't anything else on, and I was promised monsters, so I gave in and stayed up late to watch it.

I remember John Carradine introducing each segment while standing in front of a bluescreen while a shot of a castle on a stormy waterfront played on half of the frame. The castle shot looked like it was swiped from a Roger Corman Poe movie. But Carradine cracked me up with his rental tuxedo with crooked tie. The stories didn't amount to much, but there was a bevy of monsters. Cheap monsters, but monsters nonetheless. It got its weakest story out of the way at the very beginning - a story about a haunted clock of all things.

Munster Go Home! (1966) - I grew up watching The Munsters during the late 70s when it would come on after the soap operas and game shows went off in the afternoon. Herman Munster seemed mighty imposing, particularly since I thought the Frankenstein monster was a force I'd hate to reckon with. Looking (or rather gawking) at the back issues pages of Famous Monsters, I saw one cover that highlighted the new Munsters flick Munster Go Home! I then read about Munster in the Frankenstein chapter of Alan G. Frank's Horror Movies book. When it finally came on WTCG on Sunday afternoon, I made plans to drop everything (like I had that much going on in 1978) and settle in for some goodhearted guffaws with Herman, Lily, Grandpa, et al. It was pleasant enough, with the great Terry-Thomas and English locales. But it was the surprise appearance of John Carradine that made the whole film especially memorable. It wasn't a big role, but it made me smile while I was taking it all in on that leather recliner with an unsightly puncture on the cushion.

I could go on and on, but I'll save my ramblings for a future post. The only other Carradine memory that sticks out is the time my brother called to tell me he watched Terror in the Wax Museum on the ABC Friday Night Movie and that he saw John Carradine there too. I didn't get to see it, so I felt bummed out. But at least I can add that one to the list of Carradine films I can seek out and hopefully enjoy when I find them. And, for the record, I did like Billy the Kid vs. Dracula when I saw it on American Movie Classics back in 2001. So there, Leonard Maltin (and your *1/2 score).

Retro Fantastico Movie of the Week: Konga (1961)

I love movies with apes. Giant apes, killer apes in 1930s old dark house movies, ape men in Bela Lugosi and Jungle Jim flicks, and the whole Planet of the Apes canon. As evidenced in a previous post, it was probably King Kong that got me into monster movies in the first place. A few months after my mom bought me issue #132 of Famous Monsters, I saw a magazine called King of the Monsters with a ferocious giant ape being fired upon by a group of terrfied sailors. This publication, a one-shot released in early 1977 to capitalize on the new Kong film, devoted most of its pages to King Kong and his overgrown simian cohorts in fantastic cinema. There were articles on the new film The Crater Lake Monster, Godzilla, and movies about mutations and freaks. But the emphasis, from what I remember, was on the big ape genre. Once again I begged my mom to purchase this from the Redford's newstand and fortunately (unfortunately?) she gave in.

Among the monster ape and killer gorilla motion pictures in the magazine's itinerary of murderous hairy brutes was something called Konga starring Michael Gough. My brother and I kept making fun of the silly title and I was somewhat tantalized by the still of the title creature holding a man in front of the Big Ben tower. At the time, I didn't know anything about London landmarks, Michael Gough, or the interesting pedigree of teenage horror pictures that spawned this film. All I knew was I had to see this movie and see if the giant ape climbs atop the clock tower.

Unfortunately, this movie never came on any one of the local TV stations from Atlanta, Chattanooga, and Huntsville. Or at least I missed them in the TV Guides. Even when we got satellite TV and had access to New York's WOR and WPIX, they only ran the RKO and Toho Kong movies (not that I minded seeing those). The Super 8 edition of Konga was advertised in the Captain Company section of Famous Monsters back during the late 70s, but I held out for the full version to hopefully be shown on the Up All Night or Shock Theater programs. But it wasn't until last night that I finally viewed this elusive monster chiller diller. And it was using the latest technology of video streaming through a video game unit using the too-good-to-believe Netflix service.

As my knowledge of fantastic cinema increased, I came to know the prim and proper gentleman supporting actor in British horror films - Michael Gough. I first saw him as the saddened artist who loses the use of his painting arm in Dr. Terror's House of Horrors. Then he'd pop up on the late show as the auctioneer taking bids on The Skull of Marquis De Sade, D'Arcy the music thief in Hammer's The Phantom of the Opera, or the corpse who won't stay dead in Crucible of Horror. In Konga, Gough plays botany professor Charles Decker, who returns to London a year after his plane crashes in Africa. While Decker is believed to have died in the fiery crash, he has actually been living among the natives after being led there by a chimpanzee. In the village, Decker discovers meat eating plants and learns from the witch doctor there that extracts from these plants can be used to effect growth in animals. Also, Decker names his chimp friend Konga and takes him (and some carniverous seedlings) with him to his motherland.

After a year's absence, all Dr. Decker seems to be concerned about is the well-being of his simian cohort. Not even his personal assistant Margaret seems to get him excited. All Decker cares about is whether or not she has a nice big cage constructed for Konga. Then he nearly suffocates Margaret by making her assist him in a 90-degree greenhouse, where he's babying his writhing and snapping vegetation. When he creates a formula with plant extracts that spills on the floor, Margaret's cat Tabby heartily laps it up. The doctor then pulls a gun out of the drawer and shoots the cat in front of Margaret, saying you don't want a giant tabby cat roaming about.

Margaret just sulks because the wants so much to be more than a bookkeeper and venus flytrap feeder. But Decker will have none of that because he has the hots for a blonde student in his botany class. Probably the most memorable scene in this movie - besides the scene where he turns the chimpanzee into a gorilla with a shot of the extract - is when Decker begins smooching and slobbering all over the co-ed. It'll leave you queasy and uneasily amused at the same time.

Oooga Booga!!!

After Konga grows into a totally different species, the gorilla is sent out to crush and strangle Decker's enemies. Decker even hauls the big lug around in his van, something similar to producer Herman Cohen's other drive-in classic, I Was a Teenage Frankenstein - with Whit Bissell taking the walking cadaver around for midnight drives in his automobile. As a matter of fact, this movie was initially going to be called I Was a Teenage Gorilla. Alas, rational minds prevailed.

Of course, if you take notice of Konga's movie poster, you know the gorilla Konga will get even more of the growth serum as the movie progresses. It is here where we get to see some interesting miniature work and photo enlargement techniques as the man in George Barrow's gorilla suit (which looks unusually baggy in the midsection during the rampage - kind of like Konga needed some liposuction or the suit wasn't cared for in the monster wardrobe department) goes stomping through London as onlookers flee screaming. I remember seeing Herman Cohen posing with the miniature house in an issue of Filmfax and thought he seemed pretty young to be such an established producer of these B movies. Cohen even appears in a Konga cameo as the man who buys a newspaper near the beginning of the movie.

This is a doozy of a B picture from the AIP archives. The monster plants, chimp who turns into a killer gorilla who turns into a Kong wannabe, and the ripe dialogue between Gough, Margo Johns, the blonde female student, and her jealous suitor make this one that firmly belongs in the late night camp sci-fi monster pantheon. I love the rag dolls who get ape handled, too. All in all, this one's a real hoot. Cohen and Gough would reunite in 1963 for the horror film The Black Zoo, with Elisha Cook, Jr. and a murderous zoo animals that do diabolical Gough's dirty work. I've never seen that one, either.

Ugh! or Movies We Dreaded Seeing in the TV Listings

Getting the newspaper TV Week inserts were always a blast back during the late 70s when most of the local stations showed old horror films on the late show. I would usually go straight for the Friday and Saturday night listings, with some perusal of the Saturday afternoon cinematic offerings. I was starting to learn about monster movies through magazines and books I started reading in 1977. I remember gazing at all the stills in Alan G. Frank's Horror Movies book and making a mental list of all the movies I needed to look out for. Then reading the text made me want to seek out films featuring great actors and actresses who established the genre and examine the works of such well regarded directors as Terence Fisher and Roger Corman. I also gained an appreciation for the artistry of makeup pioneers like Jack Pierce and Roy Ashton. I wanted to see some of those monstrosities in action in my living room. So when I ran up on a listing for any one of the movies I read about or studied intensely, I couldn't help but yell the news to my brother, who was starting to share my interest in the fantasy film genre.

But sometimes I'd wait a whole week to look at the upcoming Shock Theater movie and feel my heart sink. Instead of the Gill Man in the Amazon, Florida, or caged up in an electric fence....instead of the Mummy in Egypt, Massuchessetts, or the bayou....instead of Tor Johnson and Bela Lugosi in their swamp shack...I would occasionally get the talking head in the crystal ball introducing what would turn out to be a grade-B murder mystery featuring a put-upon Lon Chaney as suspect #1. These are the movies that either made me forego the late night movie experience for one night or give the movie a try and not making it to the first K-Tel or Ginsu commercial. Here's the list:

Pillow of Death - something about a judge being murdered and the subsequent investigation, this one popped up on WTVC's normally monster-centric Shock Theater in Chattanooga. I remember reading the plot description in the TV Guide - I think it was categorized as a mystery or melodrama. I saw Lon Chaney's name in the acting roster and I imagined a creeping phantom who walks around carrying a soft pillow, sneaking up on unsuspecting sleepers and giving them the works with his plush weapon. But I knew it had to be another dismal whodunit when I saw that talking head in the crystal ball. I had already been duped into sitting up late to see Calling Dr. Death, another Inner Sanctum mystery introduced by the floating head. I didn't make it through the first 10 minutes of Dr. Death, so I didn't want to attempt something that sounded as dreary as....da da dum...Pillow of Death!!!



The Vulture - WTVC had its archrival WDEF that played horror movies hosted by a portly caped man with grease paint around his eyes and a skull-tipped cane in his hand. That character was Dr. Shock and he hosted low budget movies from no-name studios. When I saw The Vulture coming up on Saturday night some time in 1978, I didn't know what to expect. Vultures don't really seem that scary. Disgusting, but not scary. And the thought of a half-man, half-buzzard seemed too preposterous, even to my 8 year old mind. So I passed on this one and never saw it show up on TV again. I don't think it's on DVD or VHS either. Maybe it was a good thing I went to bed that night.



The Cat Creeps - I was already in 7th grade when this one came on TV. It was on a channel in Huntsville, AL that showed the Universal canon of horror classics. They saved this one for last after the full run of Mummy, Frankenstein, and Dracula films. Cats never seemed particularly frightening and I figured this would be in the same league as the annoying 1941 The Black Cat, with Broderick Crawford and a man who liked tearing up antique furniture in a house with a hundred cats tended to by Bela Lugosi. I hated that movie, but somehow managed to stay awake through it by working on an electronics project. Hobbies really do come in handy sometimes! I attempted to sit through The Cat Creeps, but I can't even recall what happened. I really do love the old classics, but this one didn't make a big impression on me.


Night Creatures - I grew up watching TV out of Atlanta, so I had access to a whole range of horror and sci-fi features and TV shows. WTCG-17 had dusk-to-dawn monster movies on Friday nights back during the late 70s (before it became WTBS). WXIA-11 showed AIP and Amicus chillers after Saturday Night Live back in the early 80s. WATL-36 showed movies kids weren't supposed to stay up late for. But I could count all the horror/sci-fi movies WSB-2 showed on one hand, with a couple of fingers to spare. But I perked up when I saw Night Creatures show up in the TV Guide next to Channel 2 on a Saturday night circa 1977. I wondered what kind of monstrosities these "Night Creatures" might be. But as I read further into the plot description, I read about pirates and smugglers. Ugh. It did have Peter Cushing listed in the cast, but I still passed for something on another station or maybe a full night's sleep.

Abbott and Costello Meet the Killer - WDEF-12 in Chattanooga used to show the A&C monster films on Saturday night at 10:00. But I always seemed to miss the good ones like A&C Meet Frankenstein. But one night I set out to watch one of these comedy/horror hybrids. I looked in the paper and saw the feature for the night was Abbott and Costello Meet the Killer. I guess the thought of A&C being pitted against an unhinged human criminal instead of a mummy or invisible man left me cold. I did watch a couple of segments just to see Boris Karloff do some hocus pocus and hypnotize poor, gullible Lou. But it did gently lull me to sleep.

The Strange Door - After the Horror Classics program on WAAY-31 in Huntsville played all the Frankenstein, Dracula, Wolf Man, and Gill Man movies from Universal, they dug down deep to unearth this musty costume drama. When I saw this movie listed, my heart sank. What could be so exciting about an odd-looking door, I thought. Being a Karloff fan, I had to tune in. But the histrionics and lethargic pace had me tuning out in a matter of minutes.

I'd better stop here. Of course, I've gone back and checked out some of these titles on DVD and I've actually enjoyed them. Also, I loved most of the horror and science fiction films I grew up watching on the late show and Saturday afternoon matinee. I very rarely didn't give a monster movie a chance and I've been pleasantly surprised by a few I was hesitant to watch. And I do miss those days of looking through the TV Guide and seeing what ferocious fiend or hostile alien would directly proceed the mugging meterologist's 5-day forecast at the close of the 10:00 news.

Famous Monsters 132

I remember that fateful day of December 17, 1976 well. It's not because it was the last day of class before I got out for Christmas. It's not that I got a letter from secret admirer who sat near me in my 2nd grade classroom. It was just a typical day - a day to do some last minute Christmas shopping with my mother and siblings. My mother, siblings, and I ventured out to town -- Ft. Payne, Alabama to be exact. There on the main drag - Gault Avenue - stood a used bookstore with newstand nestled in the middle of shops I don't recall anything about. I loved comic books, activity books, and magic books. I hoped to find something that I would enjoy inside the seemingly giant room with a musty collection of paperback novels. I'm sure there were lots of copies of I'm OK - You're OK and Jaqueline Susann potboilers. But I wandered over to the newstand, hoping to find a pleasant diversion with Archie and Jughead or Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids. But, there on the front row of the top shelf, standing out from the other publications with his big hairy head and slobbering fanged mug was none other than....

All right!!! King Kong! I remembered seeing the poster showing the mighty Kong perched atop the Empire State Building in a comic book ad. But the whole idea of a magazine devoted to monsters piqued my interest - I just had to pick it up the sole copy and beg my mother to buy it for me. I don't even remember opening it up to check out the contents. My mom fortunately gave in and had to face the lady cashier and hand over this monster mag for her beaming son. The cashier camped it up by gasping and shrieking "Oh my!" while she checked out the giant ape artwork. I couldn't wait to get to the car to see more of Kong and the monsters that lay within those pulp paper pages.

As we pulled onto Gault, I opened to the editorial page and much to my surprise.....

....there was the Frankenstein monster posing in front of a Christmas tree for some yuletime silliness. I was taken aback by this photo since I had only seen the monster as a frightening image in comic book poster advertisements. I remember the poster showing the Karloff creature standing in the doorway and the amazing 6-foot monster with furry vest that would amaze and scare all your friends. This was in fact the man who would corrupt me and thousands of other kiddos with his extreme knowledge of monster movieology - Uncle Forry J. Ackerman himself. He would introduce us monster kids to the Wolf Man, the Mummy, the Incredible Shrinking Man, Prince Sirki, Sinbad, Siegfried, Maria the Robotrix and Robby the Robot, Aztec Mummies, and the like. And in my very first issue of FMoF, I got my very first glimpse of.....

Bela Lugosi! Yes, Mr. Count Dracula himself. I had seen Lugosi in his Dracula garb in the back of my comics, but I had no idea of the man who put on the cape. I was even more enthralled that the article was a memoir of a magician's encounter with Mr. Lugosi during the 50s, since I loved magic shows and never missed a Doug Henning special on NBC. But those stills....man oh man! Just look up there at Lugosi as the Frankenstein monster with the nasty gash in his forehead. And his classic cape-spreading Count pose, to boot! Oh, and I almost forgot what drew me to the magazine in the first place....

The Mighty Kong! I was enthralled with shots of the giant animatronic ape surveying the crowd of terrified New Yorkers. I was too young to detect the editor's warning that this movie should most likely be avoided. I didn't catch how this new Kong was a pale imitation of the original. There was a lot of venom spiked words in those writeups that I didn't pick up on until I got a copy of issue 132 off eBay a few years ago. I did talk my parents into taking me to see it on New Years Eve, but I was very disappointed and didn't feel any magic in the big monster proceedings. I didn't let that get me down, though. I had years of Shock Theater ahead of me to give me my fill of the good old time thrills and chills. And I eventually gained an appreciation for the '76 Kong as I grew older. It's really not all that bad.

Then Uncle Forry would put you on the spot and test your monster movie mettle with a Mystery Photo: That white faced mummy with claws stood out to me. Little did I know that ugly fiend mixed it up with my three favorite knuckleheads. Can you figure it out? Of course that's Johnny Carson down below.

I must have paged through that magazine a hundred or more times. It fostered my interest in classic and not-so-classic fantastic cinema, as well as the movies playing at the drive ins and multiplexes at the time. I then had to stay up late to catch all the Shock Theater programs and go to the newstand to see if I could find another edition of FMoF. Eventually I got a subscription and looked forward to its arrival every month or two. I eventually outgrew Famous Monsters, but now I look at back issues with a joyous sense of nostalgia. And I give Uncle Forry credit for my endearing love of what he termed "fantafilms".

Welcome All Monster, Sci Fi, and Fantasy Late Show Fans!

Last night I was watching the groovy 70s Nazi zombie classic Shock Waves and all the great memories of staying up late to watch the CBS Late Movie and WOR-9's Fright Night came lumbering back to me. That is where I first caught the white faced, bleach blonde SS soldiers rising from their watery graves before the advent of VHS and DVD. But even before that, I loved finding a black and white gem from the Universal Shock Theater package while flipping through the UHF stations after the 10:00 news. Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi, Lon Chaney, Jr., and even Cedric Hardwicke and J. Carroll Naish felt like old familiar friends as I sat before a flickering phosphor tube in a darkened living room on a Saturday night. Last night as I watched Peter Cushing running through the forest as the Nazi elite closed in on him, I looked up at the clock and saw it was 10:30...always the moment the creature feature would start running during my childhood years.

It wasn't always smooth going. I remember staying up late in 1977 to watch Dracula vs. Frankenstein on Shock Theater on WTVC-9 in Chattanooga. I reveled in the thought of seeing my two favorite movie fiends go at it in what seemed like the ultimate duel to the death. I was only familiar with the Karloff monster and stills of Lugosi as Dracula. But this was a drug hazed 1971 picture with horror greats Chaney and J. Carroll Naish during their waning years. I wasn't prepared for the LSD freakout, the Dracula that looked like a mime with an afro, and the Frankenstein monster with a face like a bubbled up pie crust. I didn't make it past the second commercial break, but I did see it much later with a newfound appreciation for schlock cinema of the 60s and 70s. That love of classic and campy horror and science fiction carries on to this day, thus giving me the impetus to create this blog.

Some of what you can expect to see here include: golden age gothic monsters and mad doctors from the Shock! and Son of Shock! film packages distributed to TV stations around the country long ago, Godzilla and kaiju films from Toho, 50s sci-fi and giant insect movies from the atomic age, dubbed 60s European horror imports featuring masked phantoms or spooky castles with dungeons and snake pits, the Hammer pantheon of fantastic cinema, 70s animals on the rampage movies, AIP drive in classics, and even some great episodes of science fiction/horror/fantasy TV shows that filled up the waning hours of the UHF programming schedule way back when. Also, there will be monster movie memories involving Famous Monsters magazines, Captain Company ads, 70s horror movie books, and pop culture involving fantastic cinema during the 1970s (things like Vincent Price doing TV commercials and the notorious Magic and Suspiria commercials that freaked us kids out big time). Hopefully, I'll have something to write about all the fantastic cinema I watch from this point forward.

Thanks for reading my blog and please let me know what you think. Have a very good day and wish me luck on this project.